They started out as a family of 6. Well, 7 if you include their dog, which of course we do.
The first time we ran across the Fisher-Price Play Family was in 1959 when the company released the “Safety Bus” which none of us called it at the time nor at any time since. The Safety Bus was a small yellow school bus made of wood, and its release signalled the first time that the people were detachable from the toy.
The people were free-standing pegs that allowed us to play getting-on-and-off the school bus. The driver of the Safety Bus, sporting a unibrow, stayed firmly attached to his seat (possibly so that kids didn’t get the idea that it was okay for someone other than the bus driver to drive a bus) but there were 6 detachable kids that came along for the ride. These little non-specific peg people with marble-shaped heads, had been part of the F-P toy line since 1950 but they had always been stuck in place and all play needed to revolve around the scenario created for them.
“Looky Fire Truck” started that whole trend when it included 3 firemen perpetually stuck in the truck on their way to a fire but, frustratingly, never actually able to disembark once they had arrived. Also in the early 1950s, Fisher-Price released “Super Jet” and “Speed Rowboat” with the same unfortunate fate for their occupants.
Clearly, the toy designers realized, after the release of Safety Bus, just how much we all liked being able to do the taking out and the putting back ourselves, and they were eager to capitalize on that.
By 1960, they gave us “Snorky Fire Engine” with 4 removable firemen wearing red firemen’s hats and flourishing ARMS of all things. It lasted in the line for 2 years. The “Nifty Station Wagon” along with its two adult figures and a baby, and the first stand-alone set of the “Play Family” also came out that year.
The Family consisted of Dad (who started out as a bald guy but somehow ended up with a brown plastic toupee during the 70s), Mom (blue curvy body with a severe yellow plastic bob which would be passed along to one of the daughters once Mom had been upgraded to a yellow French Roll updo), sons Butch (sullen and wearing his plastic baseball cap sideways, clearly headed straight for jail) and Pee Wee (smaller version of Dad, pre-toupee). The family was completed by two unremarkable daughters Patty and Penny and, of course, Lucky the dog who had plastic ears added. The company tried to have him referred to as Snoopy or Fido, but finally gave in when they realized that kids everywhere refused to call him anything but Lucky.
This first version of the Play Family, as with the previous figures (both stationary and removeable), were made out of wood. The first group of Safety Bus passengers had a printed paper wrap glued around their bodies to give them more decoration, but kids didn’t need that sort of help, so those were dropped. Eventually, the figures were made out of plastic and the faces received more personality as time went along. Sometimes hats (remember the cowboy hats?) or hair were added but there wasn’t much need for more since our creativity was far superior to anything presented by a bunch of adults.
After the Play Family was released, Fisher-Price started a fire storm by introducing the “Play Family Barn” in 1968. The set used the barn (WITH a silo!) as its own carrying case and that set came with a barnyard of animals, a Play Family of 4 figures, and had barn doors that actually moo’d whenever you opened them!
Next was the “Play Family House”, which I have absolutely no recollection of, and the “Action Garage” which touted several cars, a hand-cranked elevator (with a bell), parking garage ramp and a stand-alone hoist. What more could a kid want?
Well, how about an A-Frame cottage to spend weekends at? Why not an airport? A schoolhouse with a magnetized roof for alphabet letters and a full-blown school room? Didn’t every kid NEEEEEED a “Play Family Sesame Street” of their own, with several of the show’s characters made into peg people? On and on the list went, with public interest showing no signs of waning.
In 1985, Fisher-Price changed the name of the Play Family series to Little People. The last of the Fisher-Price Play Family/Little People series came off the presses in 1991 (guess the name change wasn’t as successful as they’d hoped!). Fisher-Price changed the shape at that point, partially because they thought that they should do something fresh and mostly because of a lawsuit after some poor child choked to death on one of the figures. The new version was shorter and fatter and not able to be swallowed by humans. This change was not entirely embraced.
When Fisher-Price was bought out by Mattel in 1993, the tone began to change. In 1997, they added articulated arms and legs and other needless details to the Play Family/Little People. Electronic movements, voices and sounds were introduced in 2000. There was a TV series made, using stop motion animation, that ended after 135 episodes and a mind-boggling 6 music videos.
Since the whole theory of the Play Family had now completely jumped the shark, Mattel could only continue to top itself by putting out novelty collections. These were targeted towards adults. The collections ranged from The Beatles Yellow Submarine to the cast of The Office to RuPaul to their recent offering (2024) of Super Bowl LVIII (no details of whether Taylor Swift was added to that group).
And so, what began as a way to unbridle a child’s imagination, has become an adult’s work-desk accessory and is now strictly a collector’s product. Who in their right mind could have seen that coming? We started out with the Safety Bus, for crying out loud!!!
As bastardized as these beloved childhood toys have become, we can take comfort in the knowledge that some of what we remember from back then has stayed the same. We can still buy the Meccano sets and crayons of our youth, and Elmer’s Glue is still edible, though it has continued to be in no way palatable. Or so I’ve heard.
